Joan
Didion’s Play It As It Lays is about
disconnection and loneliness. This should come as no surprise considering the
milieu, which is centered around the emotional wastelands of Hollywood and Las
Vegas. While these locales have been mined repeatedly for the kind of anomie
described in the book, Didion manages to keep our interest in a couple
different ways.The first is her writing style. It is
spare and direct, but with enough craft and artistry that it can’t be accused
of simply holding up a mirror, stylistically, to the world it describes. The
prose levels with us, making us trust it, and we are confident that it will not
“b.s.” us. This is very important in a novel of this sort. It does not
sugarcoat the sordid events that occur, nor does it offer up the hardcore,
“unflinching” look at the world that can be its own kind of dishonesty (when it
is used to merely shock and titillate, for example). Didion presents the
material simply, without too much comment. The reader is not totally left to
“come to her own conclusions,” however. Didion definitely has an authorial
point of view, though this comes through in the way the novel is structured,
rather than the actual prose. She shuffles events in and out, and where they
begin and end is important to the overall scheme. This resonates with one of
the book’s themes: if there are answers/meaning to be found, they are not in
the character’s day-to-day existence, but seem to reside in what happens before
and after events, in their dreams, in the “white spaces” of their lives.Another way Didion keeps us engaged is
through the qualities she gives to the main character, Maria. This is a
character that we have seen many times before, someone lost and rudderless
trying to navigate through a pitiless world. She also borders on being
self-loathing, and those can be feelings that are sometimes (unintentionally)
shared by the reader. But Didion prevents Maria from crossing over to pure contemptuousness,
for either herself or her surroundings. If anything, she is extremely
self-critical, and always expecting the other shoe to drop. A line on pg. 73, “Maria
did not particularly believe in rewards, only in punishments, swift and personal,”
sums up her character almost too neatly. This is followed by: “The notion of
general devastation had for Maria a certain sedative effect…suggested an
instant in which all anxieties would be abruptly gratified…she felt a kind of
resigned tranquility.” (pg. 104) Even mundane things she does like not having a
phone could lead to disaster: “There was no one to whom she wanted to talk but
she had to have a telephone. If she could not be reached it would happen, the
peril would find Kate.” There is no doubt that she is narcissistic, but she
beats herself up so much that it feels almost cruel to think unkindly of her;
it’d be almost like kicking an injured puppy. And even though a big chunk of
the book deals with the rigmarole of getting a then-illicit abortion (the book
was published in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade), we are still affected
by Maria being haunted by the procedure. The imagery of her nightmares and
thoughts (“All that day Maria thought of fetuses in the East River, translucent
as jellyfish, floating past the big sewage outfalls with the orange peels.”
(pg. 116)) are still striking in 2014.Ultimately, Maria’s disconnection is
one that will never be rectified. This is dramatized by the ending of the book,
when the closest thing she has to a kindred spirit, the movie producer BZ,
suggests that she take a suicidal amount of Seconal pills with him. He has been
led to believe that she’s just as sick of the world they live in as he is, that
she feels just as acutely the pain he feels. But he is wrong. She does not take
what he has to offer, and even misunderstands his intentions toward the end.
(“‘Don’t.’
After she had said it she opened her eyes.”) With the person most likely to
understand her gone, Maria loses what seems to be her last chance at connection,
and her contention on the last page that she “[knows] what ‘nothing’ means” is
heartbreaking, despite (or even because of) her resolve to “keep on playing.”

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About Me

So I'm officially an author. My book is called Deadly Reflections, and is available on the Kindle Store right this second. I encourage anyone who likes a good love story with paranormal aspects to check it out!